This comment was made because I was running a community event, and answering PMs at that time would have taken away from my coordination efforts: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=720531 -- If you've attended any of my past community events, I always post something similar so those who are PMing me do not think I am ignoring them.
As I responded earlier in this thread, I have passed along your feedback so it can be considered, and commit to continue doing so. That is what I can do and will do
Some good news I just learned about, though! We are considering adjusting the way the warning is displayed. I don't have exact details on this yet, but we we are hoping to be able to make it display even more clearer than it already does.
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
As someone else rightly pointed out Brandon we are not holding you personally responsible for this whole mess. That said however, a statement like, "...we are hoping to be able to make it display even more clearer than it already does." rings of complete obliviousness and denial to the fact that many have stated they received NO WARNING AT ALL!
I'm concerned here that there is an ulterior motive, as I think someone already suggested, to force players to enable the annoying system which spams us with winners of ships. Personally I decided to leave this on as I'm not 100% sure that all of what is being spammed are real players. The reason I have this doubt is that I have recorded around 50 spammed winners from this system which I attempted to contact in order to congratulate, but when I typed "/tell someone@haswonaship" I received a message, "player not found". Strangely, this was not the same message I got when I tried to /tell an offline player that I knew existed. For those 50 email addresses that I recorded as being suspicious I only managed to contact 2 or 3 actual players. I have not tried to contact any winners for some time now so I'm not sure if the same thing still happens or not but if it does then it begs the question, "Why?". I'm also not the only person to have noticed this, or the fact that occasionally we appear to see someone win 2 or 3 ships in a row.
It's nice to hear that you're actually considering a warning that's not invisible. It would be even nicer to hear that you've decided to take steps to make certain that players with legitimate accounts aren't being banned.
Is the player currently a subscriber? Has the player ever purchased Cryptic points? Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't have a system that auto-bans revenue generating customers.
I've never seen an MMO that allows a script to issue an account ban based on keywords. There's no reason the script can't display a warning in a way that's always seen 100% of the time. If you can blow up my screen every time some random person I don't even know gets a lockbox item, I'm pretty sure you can figure out how to display a warning.
Maybe you ought to create a test account, turn off lockbox spam, and see if you get the warning, and then post the result on YouTube? It might help to restore customer confidence. Cryptic Community Team's current response has them looking like bloody muppets.
Well, and I was just starting to be happy with Cryptic again, brought and old NWN and WoW-Buddy into the game with LoR and actually considered buying Zen again instead of saving my stipend. And then they manage to make a bigger warp core breach than the time when Atari was trying to get rid of them. I already warned my friend to not mention any EC spam he gets in the game and I most definitely won't spend any more money on rights of use in a game that can automatically take them away.
I'm happy I don't have to work for Cryptic.
FKA K-Tar, grumpy Klingon/El-Aurian hybrid. Now assimilated by PWE.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
All one has to consider regarding this issue any any future concerns about Cryptic or PWE. Both companies have F ratings from the BBB. Both companies have refused, out right, to even respond to a portion of complains submitted through the BBB.
Just take that into consideration before you consider them deserving of any of your money.
All one has to consider regarding this issue any any future concerns about Cryptic or PWE. Both companies have F ratings from the BBB. Both companies have refused, out right, to even respond to a portion of complains submitted through the BBB.
Just take that into consideration before you consider them deserving of any of your money.
BBB ratings these days are almost analogous to Amazonbombings, something for which petulant gamers are infamous. IOW, they can't wholly be trusted.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I don't care how long you've been playing. I only care about how you play.
And remember to follow the rules.
You know, I'm not really livid about falling victim to this by mistake. I do agree with the other users, there should be a visible warning - Nothing was notified and I thought I was banned for something else until I googled this issue.
Submitted a ticket, and now need to wait and hope it gets cleared up. Other people got their accounts reinstated, so I'm not worried about mine, since it was an honest mistake. Now how long it will take before my account is reinstated is a good question. Lol. Hearing people range from a day to two-weeks.
You know, I'm not really livid about falling victim to this by mistake. I do agree with the other users, there should be a visible warning - Nothing was notified and I thought I was banned for something else until I googled this issue.
Submitted a ticket, and now need to wait and hope it gets cleared up. Other people got their accounts reinstated, so I'm not worried about mine, since it was an honest mistake. Now how long it will take before my account is reinstated is a good question. Lol. Hearing people range from a day to two-weeks.
I've got a fleetmate who's on day 8 and still waiting.
I've got a fleetmate who's on day 8 and still waiting.
Brandon if you want to pass along some feedback this right here is the biggest problem with this filter, and your companies customer service overall. This is a poorly conceived and implemented filter, that's bad enough, but it is made exponentially worse by the lack of customer service. I cannot think of a company I have done business with that has had worse customer service than PWE. You guys implement an auto ban filter and then have people waiting over a week for you to fix what you screwed up. PWE is a company that is making a fortune, as demonstrated by the recently posted financial reports, there is no excuse for not having a responsive customer service team. When someone contacts customer service, especially with an issue this serious, they should have a resolution within 24 hours or less, not left sitting waiting on some customer service rep to finally get around to replying to there ticket a week or two later.
I sometimes feel bad for you Brandon, you and the community staff usually do an alright job, but the company you represent here on these forums leaves allot to be desired.
Is there really no way to put an exemption on this for characters that are obviously not bot-created? For example "character had over X accolade points earned, send for manual review by GM instead".
PWE is a company that is making a fortune, as demonstrated by the recently posted financial reports, there is no excuse for not having a responsive customer service team
Well, they already have your money, so there is no reason for them to have a responsive customer support :P
Is there really no way to put an exemption on this for characters that are obviously not bot-created? For example "character had over X accolade points earned, send for manual review by GM instead".
12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
PWE probably calculated that random bans will cost them less than upkeep of an "average five-year-old".
By the way, neat idea with that accolade score check.
On a serious note though - my recent experience with Mr. Banbot killed my trust into this game. I mean, I still can play it, I still can have fun, but it doesn't feel as my game anymore. Its like I'm borrowing server time instead using my own account. That feeling will probably go away (needs time for that), but as of now its distasteful how Cryptic had ninjaed in that kind of censorship. Or how failed the implementation of this idea is.Or the "quality" of customer support. Or the "working as intended" comment.
May 2013, automatic permanent ban for mentioning gold-seller sites pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should. moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
While I am currently taking a break from this game, wind of this problem was caught over on the CO forums where I was linked to here. I have had my own ridiculous problems with PWE/Cryptic customer service and after reading about this problem I feel I can no longer support this company with my time or money. I have canceled my account and my brother may do the same. The only way corrupt companies like this learn, if they learn at all, is to stop giving them your money when they so clearly do not deserve it.
__________________________________________________ This is a signature.
I cannot think of a company I have done business with that has had worse customer service than PWE.
Square Enix had similarly terrible customer service for the first 2-3 years of Final Fantasy XIs career. They would double bill people, those people would dispute the second charge with their credit card company, and then S-E would ban the account.
Those that waited patiently for S-E to resolve the double billing in many cases never got a refund. The money was just gone, and S-E never felt the need to explain or defend their screwed up billing system, insisting that customers were wrong to object when they would be billed on the 27th of one month and then the 1st of the next month (3-4 days later).
Eventually they got their act straightened out, but only when they started seeing a drop in paid accounts.
PWE seems tied. They at least have some one who is reading and sometimes responding to customer issues, which S-E never had, but whoever is making the decisions to implement automated ban systems and such is totally clueless or outright hostile to the customer.
When Blizzard proposed something similarly stupid (real names required to post on their web forum), they were also initially stubborn. In a short period of time they realized what a mistake they were making and backed off.
We're still waiting to see if some one at PWE/Cryptic grasps what a hostile move this is to their customers and corrects it, or if they double down. It's hard to believe that they'd make a supposedly large investment to breath new life into STO, and then sabotage their own efforts in such a preventable way.
Probably the feedback mechanism to the bean counters is very sloppy, since their revenue isn't really based on subscriptions, and they'd already sold a ton of LoR related stuff prior to this snafu.
By the time some one realizes something is wrong, a lot of players may have just moved on, either willingly or unwillingly.
I'm at 14 days now - still banned and still no update on ticket. I'm a bit astonished at the lack of movement on this. I understand LoR was a big update and then there was Memorial Day, but still - two weeks?
so, people are getting banned from the game for typing the name of a gold spammer in chat? This seems wrong on so many levels.
I'm not sure I can believe this, it all sounds so unbelievable. It isnt like Cryptic is run by the Gestapo.
Is it??
The system is confirmed by PWE to be 'in place and working the way it should' (page 3 on this thread, you can follow the link in my sig for the comment).
A member of my fleet was experiencing problems getting into a fleet event. It sounded like a bug so i typed into the chat "have you raised a GM ticket?", suddenly I was disconnected with the message that my account was banned.
I didn't know it was against the rules to mention raising a GM ticket.
I never received an email to tell me why I have been banned or anything. I have sent an email to the support people but this seems very strange.
Cryptic is blocking peoples accounts based on things said in chat, with no discussion or information of the player? This is the sixth or seventh thread I've seen.
Unless there is some kind of explanation for why Cryptic things this okay, they've just lost themselves a Lifetime sale.
We highlighted what information we were able to find in this thread, figured it'd help get awareness out there for our listeners to watch out for certain key words in chat, just in case they might use them while chatting (for whatever reason or purposes).
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
redshirtarmy.com - RedShirtArmy Podcast
STO / Cryptic member since 2009 (mavgeek)
Comments
but uh, ya, running that kind of ban from a script is uh, sloppy
As someone else rightly pointed out Brandon we are not holding you personally responsible for this whole mess. That said however, a statement like, "...we are hoping to be able to make it display even more clearer than it already does." rings of complete obliviousness and denial to the fact that many have stated they received NO WARNING AT ALL!
I'm concerned here that there is an ulterior motive, as I think someone already suggested, to force players to enable the annoying system which spams us with winners of ships. Personally I decided to leave this on as I'm not 100% sure that all of what is being spammed are real players. The reason I have this doubt is that I have recorded around 50 spammed winners from this system which I attempted to contact in order to congratulate, but when I typed "/tell someone@haswonaship" I received a message, "player not found". Strangely, this was not the same message I got when I tried to /tell an offline player that I knew existed. For those 50 email addresses that I recorded as being suspicious I only managed to contact 2 or 3 actual players. I have not tried to contact any winners for some time now so I'm not sure if the same thing still happens or not but if it does then it begs the question, "Why?". I'm also not the only person to have noticed this, or the fact that occasionally we appear to see someone win 2 or 3 ships in a row.
It's nice to hear that you're actually considering a warning that's not invisible. It would be even nicer to hear that you've decided to take steps to make certain that players with legitimate accounts aren't being banned.
Is the player currently a subscriber? Has the player ever purchased Cryptic points? Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't have a system that auto-bans revenue generating customers.
I've never seen an MMO that allows a script to issue an account ban based on keywords. There's no reason the script can't display a warning in a way that's always seen 100% of the time. If you can blow up my screen every time some random person I don't even know gets a lockbox item, I'm pretty sure you can figure out how to display a warning.
Maybe you ought to create a test account, turn off lockbox spam, and see if you get the warning, and then post the result on YouTube? It might help to restore customer confidence. Cryptic Community Team's current response has them looking like bloody muppets.
Romulan Praetorian Guard
I'm happy I don't have to work for Cryptic.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
Just take that into consideration before you consider them deserving of any of your money.
BBB ratings these days are almost analogous to Amazonbombings, something for which petulant gamers are infamous. IOW, they can't wholly be trusted.
I don't care how long you've been playing. I only care about how you play.
And remember to follow the rules.
Submitted a ticket, and now need to wait and hope it gets cleared up. Other people got their accounts reinstated, so I'm not worried about mine, since it was an honest mistake. Now how long it will take before my account is reinstated is a good question. Lol. Hearing people range from a day to two-weeks.
I've got a fleetmate who's on day 8 and still waiting.
Waiting and hopeing to hear something some day.
Brandon if you want to pass along some feedback this right here is the biggest problem with this filter, and your companies customer service overall. This is a poorly conceived and implemented filter, that's bad enough, but it is made exponentially worse by the lack of customer service. I cannot think of a company I have done business with that has had worse customer service than PWE. You guys implement an auto ban filter and then have people waiting over a week for you to fix what you screwed up. PWE is a company that is making a fortune, as demonstrated by the recently posted financial reports, there is no excuse for not having a responsive customer service team. When someone contacts customer service, especially with an issue this serious, they should have a resolution within 24 hours or less, not left sitting waiting on some customer service rep to finally get around to replying to there ticket a week or two later.
I sometimes feel bad for you Brandon, you and the community staff usually do an alright job, but the company you represent here on these forums leaves allot to be desired.
Also, please see:
http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html
12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
Well, they already have your money, so there is no reason for them to have a responsive customer support :P
PWE probably calculated that random bans will cost them less than upkeep of an "average five-year-old".
By the way, neat idea with that accolade score check.
On a serious note though - my recent experience with Mr. Banbot killed my trust into this game. I mean, I still can play it, I still can have fun, but it doesn't feel as my game anymore. Its like I'm borrowing server time instead using my own account. That feeling will probably go away (needs time for that), but as of now its distasteful how Cryptic had ninjaed in that kind of censorship. Or how failed the implementation of this idea is.Or the "quality" of customer support. Or the "working as intended" comment.
pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should.
moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
The question they should be asking themselves is, do they want to get more of your money?
A regular customer will buy things from C-Store.
A Gold Account is paying a monthly sub fee.
If the account is terminated, both those sources of income are terminated along with it.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
redshirtarmy.com - RedShirtArmy Podcast
STO / Cryptic member since 2009 (mavgeek)
I just hope Kotaku don't get wind of this, they'd have a field day!
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
This is a signature.
Square Enix had similarly terrible customer service for the first 2-3 years of Final Fantasy XIs career. They would double bill people, those people would dispute the second charge with their credit card company, and then S-E would ban the account.
Those that waited patiently for S-E to resolve the double billing in many cases never got a refund. The money was just gone, and S-E never felt the need to explain or defend their screwed up billing system, insisting that customers were wrong to object when they would be billed on the 27th of one month and then the 1st of the next month (3-4 days later).
Eventually they got their act straightened out, but only when they started seeing a drop in paid accounts.
PWE seems tied. They at least have some one who is reading and sometimes responding to customer issues, which S-E never had, but whoever is making the decisions to implement automated ban systems and such is totally clueless or outright hostile to the customer.
When Blizzard proposed something similarly stupid (real names required to post on their web forum), they were also initially stubborn. In a short period of time they realized what a mistake they were making and backed off.
We're still waiting to see if some one at PWE/Cryptic grasps what a hostile move this is to their customers and corrects it, or if they double down. It's hard to believe that they'd make a supposedly large investment to breath new life into STO, and then sabotage their own efforts in such a preventable way.
Probably the feedback mechanism to the bean counters is very sloppy, since their revenue isn't really based on subscriptions, and they'd already sold a ton of LoR related stuff prior to this snafu.
By the time some one realizes something is wrong, a lot of players may have just moved on, either willingly or unwillingly.
If you ask me, some bad publicity is just what the doctor ordered.
I'd like to know those figures.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
That's the last thing I want. People leave the game and we all suffer.
I'm not sure I can believe this, it all sounds so unbelievable. It isnt like Cryptic is run by the Gestapo.
Is it??
The system is confirmed by PWE to be 'in place and working the way it should' (page 3 on this thread, you can follow the link in my sig for the comment).
A member of my fleet was experiencing problems getting into a fleet event. It sounded like a bug so i typed into the chat "have you raised a GM ticket?", suddenly I was disconnected with the message that my account was banned.
I didn't know it was against the rules to mention raising a GM ticket.
I never received an email to tell me why I have been banned or anything. I have sent an email to the support people but this seems very strange.
Cryptic is blocking peoples accounts based on things said in chat, with no discussion or information of the player? This is the sixth or seventh thread I've seen.
Unless there is some kind of explanation for why Cryptic things this okay, they've just lost themselves a Lifetime sale.
Well, they can't hide from the players' concerns much longer now, can they?
By the way, I'm having a 75% off sale on pitchforks and flaming torches, get a free DIY Lynch mob kit with every purchase!
And torvin, love the N7 avatar!
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
No, seriously, sometimes you get banned for it.
http://www.redshirtarmy.com/?p=1737
We highlighted what information we were able to find in this thread, figured it'd help get awareness out there for our listeners to watch out for certain key words in chat, just in case they might use them while chatting (for whatever reason or purposes).
redshirtarmy.com - RedShirtArmy Podcast
STO / Cryptic member since 2009 (mavgeek)